


Gotta Catch 'Em All

by lastSaskatchewanPirate



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff, M/M, pokeformers AU, totally ridiculous
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-05-02 16:05:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 7,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14548365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lastSaskatchewanPirate/pseuds/lastSaskatchewanPirate
Summary: In which a malfunction with the groundbridge provides flimsy narrative plausibility for an utterly ridiculous premise.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I hold [soursoppi](https://soursoppi.tumblr.com/) and their excruciatingly adorable PokeFormers mashup for this nonsense.

In retrospect, everyone in both factions agreed that Shockwave’s decision to set off a gamma-burst disruptor inside the ground bridge was a fantastically bad idea. Starscream in particular was not shy about using expressions like “catastrophically stupid,” “irresponsibly lacking in forethought,” and the most offensive: “totally illogical.” The impact of these statements was considerably lessened by Starscream’s expressing them on the opposite side of a secured bulkhead from the medbay in which Shockwave was undergoing repairs while in medical stasis, but he was confident that someone would make a point of telling Shockwave all about it and therefore it counted as both scathing commentary and an appropriate demonstration of his bold leadership abilities, since – as SIC – he had stepped once more into the command void left by Megatron’s _temporary incapacitation_.

The socio-political machinations in play on the Nemesis were a low priority as far as the Autobots were concerned; they had much more pressing issues directly at hand.

The gamma-burst disruptor lived up to its name in a dramatic fashion, catastrophically destabilizing the ground bridge and ejecting the Autobots mid-retreat. The ground bridge iris shuddered, crawled with sparks and arcing plasma, and then exploded in a manner that a high-budget major motion picture could only dream of.

There was a deafening silence.

Part of that, Fowler granted, was due to the deafening effects of the explosion itself – given how much pain he was experiencing, it seemed likely that his left eardrum had burst – but that was secondary to the stupefying influence of the scene before him.

He had seen the Autobots injured after battles and explosions that would have reduced a human to a thin red paste. The smell of hot metal and oil and burned circuitry, the sight of scorched plating, the sound of Ratchet’s impassioned swearing were all too familiar at this point; but this? Shock had welded his feet to the catwalk and his tongue to the roof of his mouth as he stared at the carnage below.

The children recovered first, as usual, drawing closer to the prone, inert bodies of what was left of their friends; and it was Jack who finally whispered, shaken and disbelieving, “… Optimus?”

Optimus blinked woozily up at him. “… Meow?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Who's that Pokemon?

The children stared down at Optimus. He stared back up at them.

_Up_. What fragged-up nonsense was this? Where were his diagnostics? Where was his HUD? Why did he appear to be _organic_?

What the frag was going on here?

His bemusement was interrupted by a shout of outraged dismay from Ratchet. “What the frag is going on here?” were the words that his brain interpreted; but those were not the _sounds_ he was hearing, Optimus realized as he turned, what he was _actually_ hearing sounded more like an angry cockatiel in a washing machine …

… which abruptly made sense when he saw Ratchet. Oh, the face – the _expression_ – was immediately recognizable despite all the other changes, but those other changes included being covered head to foot in short, dense, peach-colored fur, stubby axolotl-like protrusions on Ratchet’s head, and the definite suggestion of a marsupial pouch on Ratchet’s belly.

Ratchet was also small enough to barely clear June Darby’s knee and was shaped like a bad-tempered gumdrop.

What the _frag_.

A quick survey of the rest of Team Prime revealed myriad similarly bizarre mutations. Bumblebee was still yellow with black striping, but looked vaguely like a rabbit with a long tail; Smokescreen had become some sort of bizarrely accessorized frog; Bulkhead resembled nothing so much as a bear-frog hybrid with a palm tree on his back – he did not appear to have noticed that addition yet, being too preoccupied with the horror of his own feet – and Arcee was … well, she was still slim and elegant and pointy, but there was more pterodactyl than motorcycle to her physique now; and Wheeljack … sweet Primus, Optimus didn’t even know where to begin with the gruesome organic mashup that was Wheeljack.

Then again, when Jack led him into the bathroom and lifted him to stand on the sink and look into the mirror, Optimus didn’t really know where to begin with himself.

He was a cat.

He was a blue cat, with white paws and face and belly, and red forelegs, and oddly the center crest piece of his helm was still there, perched between broad triangular ears that never stopped moving.

He was a _cat_.

He tried to explain in detail why exactly this was a problem and how he felt about it, not to mention the immediate security concerns inherent in _what if the Decepticons find out_ , but it immediately became clear that, while the humans knew who he was and that he was trying to speak, all they could hear was meowing. If he listened to the sounds he was making instead of to the words he was speaking, Optimus himself could hear that yes, he was meowing. Occasionally chirping or making indeterminate little _mrrp_ sounds, if you wanted to be annoyingly specific about it; but essentially he was meowing.

Fantastic. He and his team were now tiny, bizarre organic mutants, and the ground bridge was broken – possibly destroyed completely, they hadn’t had a chance to really check it out what with the whole being-turned-into-organic-mutants issue, and Ratchet was too busy hyperventilating into a paper bag over his lack of medical knowledge about organic mutants to think about fixing it anyway.

What _else_ could go wrong today?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Here](https://78.media.tumblr.com/fa05739739aa439eef7e0a3622341edc/tumblr_p317hktskm1x2shy8o2_1280.jpg) is [soursoppi's](https://soursoppi.tumblr.com) artwork that inspired this madness.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is an object demonstration of why we never ask the question, "What else could go wrong?"

They had a whopping twenty-seven minutes in which to relax before Optimus was reminded of the folly of tempting fate by asking what else could go wrong.

Ratchet had finally stopped hyperventilating into a paper bag and had settled in with grim determination (and June Darby) to teach himself the entirety of Earth’s biological, pharmacological, medical, and veterinary sciences as quickly as possible before the next disaster occurred. Optimus was trying to figure out how to write without actual opposable thumbs – luckily, it seemed that his toe pads were as effective as human fingertips on an inductive touch-pad. Miko was thoroughly distracting everyone else from possible angst or ennui by playing “The Floor is Lava,” assisted by Bulkhead in the role of Autonomously Mobile Furniture. His attempts to cause Smokescreen to fall into the “lava” were thus far being effectively thwarted by Smokescreen’s disturbing jump range and his even more disturbing ability to stick to vertical surfaces.

All seemed right with the world – or as right as it could be when everyone had been accidentally transmogrified into tiny organic mutants, anyway – which meant that it was the perfect opportunity for Fate to upset the proverbial apple cart.

A heart-stopping roar of thwarted fury and pain suddenly echoed through the base, and everyone turned as a single horrified unit to see Megatron clawing his way out of the empty 55-gallon barrel in which he had found himself after the explosion, claws punching through the metal and red eyes blazing with wrath, a feral snarl showing every pointed fang in his appalling maw.

It would have been a significantly more terrifying display had he not also been approximately three feet tall and covered in lavender fur.

Everyone stared at everyone else. There was a distinct sense of free-floating embarrassment waiting for a target.

Unsurprisingly, it was Miko who found her voice first, and she demonstrated this with a high-pitched squeal that made Optimus’s furry little ears flatten defensively to his skull.

“He’s FLUFFY!” She charged toward Megatron, who was completely nonplussed by being suddenly out-classed in the weight and height departments by a human, and dropped to her knees in front of him. He blinked up at her; those red eyes occupied most of his face now, and black-tipped triangular ears peeked out of the spectacular mane of fluff; and, hilariously, he had somehow maintained his enormously expressive eyebrows, which were telegraphing his growing dismay with humiliating clarity. “Holy crap, do you guys _see this_? He’s so fluffy I think I’m gonna die!”

Jack quickly snagged her by one arm and dragged her out of savaging range just as Megatron regained enough self-possession to take a swipe at her.

“Uh, yeah,” said Jack, nervously eyeballing the homicidal ball of purple fur and rage that was clearly gearing up for some significant carnage, “let’s pay attention to that ‘gonna die’ part, okay? That’s still Megatron, and no matter how fluffy he is, we just saw him rip apart a 55-gallon drum.”

All of the humans took a step back. All of the Autobots, determined to prove that the line between bravery and insanity was narrow indeed, took a step forward.

Megatron narrowed his big round eyes, pinned back his cute little ears, bristled his irresistibly soft fur, and prepared to eviscerate the first target he could get his talons into; and then Optimus Prime stepped into his path with a stern expression on his little round face.

“Meow,” said Optimus firmly.

Megatron roared at him. He still had a mouthful of appalling teeth, and had clearly added a long, prehensile tongue to his arsenal. Everyone winced – partly because Optimus was half Megatron’s height and, unless Megatron really was all fur all the way through, less than a quarter Megatron’s weight; but mostly because of the tongue.

“ _Meow_ ,” said Optimus, not budging, and held up one little pink-padded paw in a universally understood gesture to stop.

Megatron took a deep breath, readied himself to pounce, and then stopped as though he’d been smacked with a rolled-up newspaper and gave Optimus a wide-eyed once-over.

Optimus rolled his eyes and sighed eloquently.

Megatron stared some more and then gestured feebly, waving one taloned paw at Optimus in a transparently clear “what the frag” gesture. Optimus returned the gesture impatiently, prompting Megatron to actually take a look at himself for the first time post-explosion; at which point Megatron _freaked the hell out_.

It was kind of pathetic, really; he was brushing frantically at his arms and body as though the fur might be rubbed off somehow, and there was an almost inaudible panting whimper building up in the back of his throat, and it looked for a moment as though he might do something drastic in a fit of visceral revulsion when Optimus stepped closer, took Megatron by the wrists, and stopped him with a sound that could only be transcribed as “ _mrrrp_.”

Megatron stared at him in mute horror, and then coughed out an uncanny impression of a basset hound sitting on a rake.

Optimus patted him soothingly on the (fluffy, purple) arm, chirped again, and made a sweeping gesture to encompass the room and its occupants. It was an impressively grand, almost noble gesture, given that it was being made by a little white paw with tiny pink toe pads.

Megatron stared at him a moment longer and then confirmed to the room at large that a significant percentage of his personality had been retained by rolling his eyes hard enough to pop them out of the sockets and then face-palming. Optimus looked smugly satisfied.

The moment of rapprochement was rudely interrupted by Fowler’s interjection of profanity.

The kids stared at him, Miko in awe. “Dude,” she whispered. “I’ve never even _heard_ some of those words. Do it again!”

“Forget you heard that,” Fowler said. “June, I want you to get the kids out of here; they don’t need to see this.”

“Uh,” said Jack. “See what, exactly?”

Fowler unholstered his sidearm and clicked off the safety.

Everyone froze; and then everything happened at once – Optimus leapt in front of Megatron as Fowler took aim, and June grabbed Raf and Miko and started towing them toward the exit, and the other Cybertronians set up a clamor that sounded like a threshing machine being dropped into a petting zoo from a great height …

And then Megatron opened his mouth, snagged the gun out of Fowler’s hand with his tongue, and swallowed it.

Everyone stared at him in shock. Megatron glared defiantly at Fowler; and then an expression of dismay crossed his face, and he leaned forward and horked up the gun at Fowler’s feet.

The gun was not improved by the experience, and was definitely no longer in optimal firing condition.

No one really knew where to look, aside from _not at Megatron_. The tongue was far more disturbing than anything else that had just happened. To his credit, Megatron looked to be just as horrified by what he’d done as everyone else was.

“Did you see that?” Miko yelped. She had freed herself from June’s grip, which had gone slack with horror, and was now jumping up and down at a safe distance. “Did you guys _see that_? That was _gross_! That was _awful_! That was _so cool_!”

“Pika pi,” said Bumblebee disgustedly. Ratchet made a noise that defied description but nevertheless clearly communicated his agreement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [There's](https://78.media.tumblr.com/6b0986a01112df15484df7f9fb3e32c5/tumblr_p317hktskm1x2shy8o1_1280.jpg) our malevolent fluffy boy ...
> 
> [Oh Megs, no ... ](https://soursoppi.tumblr.com/post/173729625922/travellinglemonworkshop-oh-look-more-fic-based)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What do tiny organic mutants eat, anyway?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a really short chapter, which seems to be something that's going to happen sometimes with this fic. I'm just gonna run with it; what the heck.

The human-scaled iPad was ludicrously huge in his tiny paws, to say nothing of being technologically limited – compared to a Cybertronian datapad, this was little more than a primitive toy, but since a Cybertronian datapad was considerably larger than Optimus himself at the moment, some concessions were necessary. At least Raf had been able to set up a local server that allowed Optimus to access the base’s computer system from the iPad instead of scrambling across the mech-scaled panels he usually used …

Optimus found himself chewing on his stylus again, and put it down firmly with a decisive little _click_. There was no getting around it. Sooner or later, their luck was going to run out; the Decepticons would come and the Autobots would be helpless, unable to stop them, unable to protect themselves, to say nothing of their human allies; and try as he might Optimus could not come up with a solution.

He huffed out a tiny sigh and went back to work, scrolling through the ancient databases archived on the base mainframe, searching for any faint glimmer of hope in the form of a relic, a legend, _anything_ that he could use to save them when battle would inevitably find them again.

Ratchet, meanwhile, was busy dealing with his own source of concern, frantically studying every scrap of terrestrial literature he could find in hopes of being able to maintain their fragile little organic bodies. He had reacted poorly to the discovery that skeletal similarities had next to no bearing on pharmacological sensitivities – the fact that humans routinely eat foods that are actively poisonous to most other mammals was bad enough, but the fact that humans are then perfectly happy to consume substances that are also poisonous _to them_ , or at least which cause intense pain, was enough to render him mute with wrathful frustration.

In the end, figuring out what the transmogrified Cybertronians could and would eat turned out to be much more straightforward than Ratchet had feared, and basically consisted of Jack, Miko, and Raf pulling out their lunch bags and then being mobbed by an assortment of fluffy, inquisitive little faces and hands and bright, pleading eyes.

Ratchet had been nearly apoplectic with dread after a disturbingly thorough briefing on peanut allergies and anaphylaxis, a state not assuaged in the least by Smokescreen bulldozing his way through a trio of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. There was a tense moment in which everyone held their breath waiting for Smokescreen to keel over dramatically, break out in hives, or possibly explode; but when the only explosion that resulted was a burp and a signed request for a glass of milk, the experiment was declared a success and Fowler took the children on a grocery run.

A different experiment was initiated on their return, one with even fewer protocols and a complete lack of double-blind testing; namely, which flavor of jelly paired best with peanut butter. Wheeljack had foregone the jelly experiment entirely and was currently horrifying everyone by combining his peanut butter with sriracha and jalapenos, Bulkhead had expressed a preference for marshmallow fluff and bananas, and Bumblebee had – initially as a joke – gone with honey and then decided that he actually quite liked it.

During all of this, Megatron had remained in the little den he had claimed beneath the stairs; but finally it appeared that hunger had driven him out when huge red eyes and black-tipped ears appeared over the edge of the lunch table, followed by a sneaky little sharp-clawed paw reaching for Fowler’s BLT.

Fowler snatched up his precious sandwich and leveled a glare at Megatron. Megatron pinned his ears back, leveled his own glare at Fowler, and added a growl that would have been significantly more menacing coming from an entity that was not small, fluffy, and purple.

“Hell no,” said Fowler sternly. “This is my damn BLT. Go mooch a PBJ off the kids, they made extra.”

Megatron had clearly decided that bacon was infinitely superior to peanut butter, but this opinion was shared by Fowler who also had the benefit of possession being nine-tenths of the law on his side; on the other hand, Megatron happened to be in possession of a mouthful of teeth that would make a tiger shark envious, and he was winding up to apply them to Fowler’s ankle when Optimus stopped him with a slap and a sharply-inflected _meow_.

Megatron retreated to his den with a peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich, and sulked his way through it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [What do tiny organic mutants eat, anyway?](https://soursoppi.tumblr.com/post/173936630432/travellinglemonworkshop-a-little-more)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pokeformers: more than meets the eye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm really not worrying about careful world building, technical details, or really much of anything with this particular fic; it's just off-the-cuff, pure silly crack.

Predictably, it was Bumblebee who first demonstrated that anything was out of the ordinary – or as ordinary as things could be at this point, what with everyone being _tiny_ and _fluffy_ and, not to harp on it or anything, but for Primus’s sake, _organic_.

Bumblebee was, first and foremost, a scout, and secondly an experienced saboteur; and as such he had spent millions of years honing his inherent skills of observation and adaptability. He paid attention to his surroundings, but he also paid attention to his own capabilities, which were often all that stood between him and a messy, protracted deactivation at the claws of Megatron; so it really wasn’t all that surprising that Bee noticed that nagging little itch in the back of his mind and followed its urging to its unnatural conclusion.

On the other hand, the only warning that anyone else had of this development was a shout of “ _Pika … CHU_!” followed by the flash and crackle of a huge static discharge.

The Cybertronian tech was well-shielded and also designed with this sort of random electrical surge in mind. The Earth tech, sadly, was not, and Optimus let out an involuntary yowl of dismay as his iPad flickered and shut down unexpectedly.

Everyone turned to the epicenter of the flash and crackle, and found Bumblebee sitting in the middle of a scorch mark on the floor, obviously enormously pleased with himself.

“What,” said Fowler, twitching as random static snapped through the cheap polyester of his sport coat with every move, “the _hell_. Was that?”

“Pika pi,” said Bumblebee proudly, and then expounded at length in an incomprehensible string of _pika pikas_ that had all the humans completely befuddled. The Cybertronians, on the other hand, were listening very intently.

Fowler leaned toward Raf. “I don’t suppose you have any idea what they’re saying?”

Raf shook his head sadly. “Not a clue. They all learned some sign language, but this is way more complicated than ‘more’ or ‘please’ … I mean, I guess Bee is telling them how he did that electrical discharge thing, but –“

Raf’s speculation was cut off by a horrified shout of “he’s _what_?!” from Fowler and a bizarre gurgling noise from Wheeljack; and then there was water everywhere.

Soaked to the bone, freezing cold, and now bereft of most functioning electronic devices, Optimus nevertheless found himself beginning to smile.

Maybe they weren’t helpless after all.

*

Naturally, this was the point at which the Decepticons decided to show up.

Luckily, they opted not to do so in person, but that was about all that could be said for it. Any day involving communication with Starscream was, by definition, not a good day.

“Greetings, puny Earthling,” Starscream smarmed from the communications monitor. Fowler had never before really appreciated that the word “smarm” could function as a verb; then again, if any sentient being could manage to verb that particular adjective, it would be Starscream.

“Afternoon,” said Fowler blandly. “Something I can help you with?”

“Unlikely,” said Starscream in his haughtiest tones. “It is vital that I speak with Optimus Prime immediately. Fetch him.”

“Believe me, I’d _love_ to pass this call off to Prime,” Fowler replied dryly, “but unfortunately for both of us, he’s not available. I can take a message, though.”

“I’m not going to waste any more of my valuable time talking to a fleshbag underling,” and wasn’t that a nasty sneer twisting Starscream’s narrow face. “Fetch him _now_.”

Fowler bristled. “Like I said – I would if I could, but the big guy isn’t available right now, so why don’t you take –“

He was interrupted by a tiny tug on his jacket sleeve; without looking, Fowler knew it was Optimus. Starscream’s frustrated scowl occupied the viewscreen, and Fowler carefully did not look away – he might not be the best agent the US military could have assigned as liaison, but he was a damn good poker player and he knew when to bluff.

“—you know what,” said Fowler thoughtfully, “I think I might be able to patch you through to him. You willing to give me a minute to try that?”

The scowl cleared from Starscream’s face and he smirked triumphantly at the human he had so easily intimidated into compliance. “I suppose I could be magnanimous, since you have wisely chosen to cooperate,” he purred. “By all means, _try_.”

It was with no small satisfaction that Fowler put the arrogant bastard on hold.

Dropping to one knee, Fowler gestured Raf to come help, and they quickly set up a video call using Raf’s laptop. With the actual video transmission blanked and only audio available, Optimus would theoretically be able to talk to Starscream without being seen.

Which brought up the real problem.

“Is he gonna be able to understand you?” Fowler hissed as Optimus tucked himself comfortably beneath the communications console, laptop open in front of him, and carefully positioned the headset and microphone on his fuzzy little head.

Optimus shrugged, which was a bizarre gesture to see on him in any case and even stranger now that he was a cat. “Meow.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought you’d say,” Fowler muttered, and extricated himself painfully from the cramped space beneath the console – he was getting too damn old for this crap.

One deep breath to settle himself, and Fowler reengaged the communications link. Starscream was not actually drumming his talons on the console in front of him, but it was a near thing.

“ _Well_?” he demanded.

“Sorry for the delay,” said Fowler smoothly. “Assuming this works, I should be able to patch you through right now.”

“Good,” Starscream snapped pettishly, “and you had better hope that your pathetic technology can actually do the job, otherwise –“

“Meow,” said Optimus firmly.

Starscream stopped mid-threat as though he’d been hit in the face with a tree.

Fowler braced himself. Any minute now, the game would be up and the Decepticons would be sweeping down on them …

“Optimus Prime,” said Starscream, sounding rather strangled. “There … seems to be some sort of interference due to this primitive human equipment. Would you … mind ... repeating that?”

“Meow,” said Optimus graciously.

“… oh,” said Starscream, and then pulled himself together. “Yes. I have contacted you with news of great import. Three days ago, Lord Megatron’s transponder ceased transmitting. All subsequent efforts to reinitiate contact have failed, and – as such – we are forced to conclude that he has been offlined, most likely as a consequence of that incompetent disaster with the groundbridge …” He trailed off into a brief muttered imprecation about Shockwave’s tactical, strategic, and logical failings, and concluded with several rude speculations about Shockwave’s parentage.

“Meow?” said Optimus, attempting to steer him back on track.

“Are we –“ Starscream spluttered in outrage. “ _No_ , we’re not calling to surrender! This is your notification that I, Starscream, now lead the Decepticons! Unlike that moron Megatron, who couldn’t plan his way out of a paper bag, _I_ shall lead us to glorious victory! I offer you this one chance to surrender before –“

Interruption mid-rant was, it seemed, the order of the day. Fowler and Optimus watched in frozen horror as Megatron launched himself from his noisome den below the stair and onto the communications console in a blur of fangs and lavender fluff, and began cursing at Starscream.

Never mind that he sounded like a fork caught in a garbage disposal; he was very clearly cursing at Starscream, and Starscream very clearly understood every word.

Starscream also very clearly did not understand – or believe – what he was seeing.

“Lord Megatron?!” He wheezed in shock and growing amusement; with Fowler standing there to provide scale, it was all too obvious just how tiny Megatron really was. “What is … How did … What the _frag_ …?”

Megatron replied with an uncanny impression of a bear eating a leaf rake.

Starscream cut him off, a sinister smirk curling his mouth in an expression of gleeful menace. “No, _Lord_ Megatron,” he purred, “it appears that you are hardly in a position to be giving orders to anyone. I _will_ take my rightful place as ruler of the Decepticons! And I _will_ take great pains to ferret you out of your hiding place so I can _crush you_ like the insignificant weakling you have been revealed to be!”

Starscream’s voice rose to a towering shout; and as it did, Megatron’s eyes narrowed. His paws twisted into fists. A rumbling growl resonated from his barrel-shaped little body; and, far more disturbingly, a glowing purple haze began to rise around him.

Fowler started backing up as quickly as possible without actually falling off the catwalk.

Starscream stopped mid-rant, and stared at his drastically altered ex-leader quizzically. “What is … what are you doing?” he demanded nervously. “What is that? How are you _doing_ that?”

Megatron snarled at him, all horrible teeth and horrible tongue and glowing eyes, and then …

… then there was an explosive burst of what Fowler could only describe as dark light, and the communications monitor was replaced by a smoking hole in the wall.

Ratchet hollered at Megatron, who was wavering where he stood on the cracked and scorched console, looking both shell-shocked and disgustingly pleased with himself. Fowler did not need any translation whatsoever to recognize the infuriated howl of “ _I needed that_!”

“Meow,” said Optimus ruefully. Megatron snickered, and then fell off the console and began to snore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Oh, Megs ...](https://soursoppi.tumblr.com/post/174027984837/travellinglemonworkshop-more-pokeformers)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very brief, very fluffy interlude.

Miko elbowed Jack. “Check it out,” she hissed in the loudest stage whisper outside of an off-off-Broadway dinner theater production of _Fiddler on the Roof_ , “Hairball is at it again.”

Jack girded his loins for this fresh horror and directed his gaze as instructed; and sure enough, there was Megatron trying to sneak up on Optimus again.

It was an unusually awkward display of sneaking, to be sure. Megatron was sidling up to Optimus on all fours, almost crab-walking sideways as though his body was trying to be nonchalant but his face had missed the memo and was telegraphing his interest like Western Union during the gold rush. His triangular bottle-brush tail was completely poofed out and held straight up in the air, and he was craning his neck as far up and forward as possible; and he was _sniffing_.

Optimus was ignoring the whole humiliating display with fervent dedication, apparently absorbed in his perusal of his ever-present iPad.

Megatron inched closer, still sniffing. Optimus continued to ignore him. Across the room, Bumblebee made an angry staticky noise and glared daggers at the fluffy purple menace, which would have been ineffectual even if the fluffy purple menace had been paying the slightest bit of attention to him.

Megatron finally got close enough to Optimus to actually sniff _him_ and not just the proximal atmosphere; Optimus put up with the attention for an interminable moment, but then the sniffing turned into something better described as _whuffling_ , and Megatron jammed his whole face into the back of Optimus’s neck with an ecstatic wriggle, and Optimus had had enough. He whipped around, said “ _Meow_ ” in decisive tones, and whacked Megatron across the face with one little white paw.

Megatron reared back mid-whuffle, radiating shock and embarrassment; tried to cover his shame with a perfunctory hiss; and then scuttled off to his noisome den beneath the stairs, fluffy tail drooping.

“Huh,” said Jack.

“Gross,” said Miko.

Jack looked at the tightly coiled ball of lavender fluff huddled under the stairs, and thought privately that he’d describe it more as ‘sad.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Oh, Megs ...](https://soursoppi.tumblr.com/post/174200434182/travellinglemonworkshop-hey-how-about-a-little)


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the new normal -- which, with this crew, isn't saying much.

Life settled down, as much as it ever did for a group of aliens trying to make their way incognito on a possibly hostile world while dealing with a trio of unpredictable and frankly chaotic juvenile specimens of the local dominant species; which was to say, life settled down much as it had before the groundbridge incident, albeit with fewer Decepticon attacks.

A shaken Starscream, once they had managed to reestablish radio contact – apparently the Decepticons had Fowler’s cell number, which disturbed him to no end – had agreed to a temporary cease-fire until the whole mess could be sorted out, and then signed off with ominous mutterings about Cyclopian horrors and ”thankfully still in stasis” and “Primus only knows what he’s capable of now,” which reassured absolutely no one; but at least it sounded like it was Starscream’s problem for the time being, and not theirs.

While Ratchet split his time between groundbridge repair and accelerated vet school, Wheeljack set about repairing the communications console that Megatron had destroyed. He might have looked like the unholy consequence of a drunken tryst between a chinchilla and a red-eared slider, but Jackie was definitely still in there, technical acumen and all; and with the manpower on loan from Fowler and a half-dozen eager young grunts from Nellis, they managed to extract the Jackhammer’s backup comms array and set it up in the base to serve as primary while Wheeljack and Ratchet tried to salvage any remaining parts from the pile of slag left over from Megatron’s tantrum. (There wasn’t much. Whatever that purple ball of energy was, it had a notably deleterious effect on electronics, Cybertronian and otherwise.)

“That purple menace,” as Fowler had dubbed him after Megatron had successfully bitten him on the leg after lying in wait in Fowler’s office ventilation system for sixteen hours, was definitely not adjusting to his new state of being as well as the Autobots. Part of that was definitely due to the lack of a preexisting support network – Bumblebee and Smokescreen, for example, had had a long-standing arrangement for blowing off steam with a friendly but highly competitive race; they still raced each other, but had shifted from the dirt track to the local outdoor ropes course instead. Bulkhead and Wheeljack played a modified version of lob – the ball was smaller, but that was the extent of the modifications, which meant that Ratchet could maintain _his_ preferred exercise of shouting and throwing things at them when they dragged themselves back in after a game, filthy and banged-up and grinning like lunatics. Optimus and Ratchet had each other, as well as the humans, and their work, and being small and furry had not changed any of that.

Megatron, on the other hand, was alone. He couldn’t go back to the Nemesis without being unceremoniously dispatched by any of his soldiers – disturbing new skill set aside, he still was no match for the combined forces of the Decepticons, even with whatever support Starscream and Soundwave might be willing or able to offer. He was on understandably rocky terms with the entirety of Team Prime, which left him utterly bereft of companionship; and he had apparently developed some sort of frankly disturbing fixation on Optimus, much to the dismay of absolutely everyone (himself included).

The least-stealthy sneaking in the history of Ever was funny enough, and seeing Megatron get smacked around routinely by a tiny, fluffy Optimus Prime was deeply gratifying after all the fighting and bloodshed Megatron had caused; but the bewildered persistence and the dejected retreat were honestly kind of pathetic to the more empathetic members and associates of Team Prime.

Specifically, it was pathetic to June Darby, who hated Megatron as fiercely as anyone but found his tiny purple despondency tragic enough to inspire pity along with the lingering hate; and so it was June who – in a fit of whimsy – made a little plush Optimus-kitty and left it lying inconspicuously on the lunch table one day.

Megatron viewed it from his den beneath the stairs with deep suspicion; but when several hours had passed and no one had done anything more than move it out of the way, he emerged and made his way over as nonchalantly as possible (which was to say, not at all – Megatron had never been capable of nonchalance in his entire existence, and being turned into a small purple cat-eared nightmare of misbegotten biology had not changed that), and then peeked at it over the edge of the table with huge red eyes.

Everyone ignored him fervently.

Emboldened, Megatron reached up one clawed forepaw and poked at the plush Optimus.

There continued to be a resounding lack of response.

Lightning quick, Megatron snatched it up and scrambled back to his den under the stairs, where he turned his back to everyone and sat very still for a long time.

*

All things taken into consideration, it was perhaps unsurprising that Jack was the one to actually broach the subject directly.

Megatron was, as his wont, peeking unsubtly across the room at Optimus and then quickly looking way as soon as anyone appeared to notice; it was hauntingly, horribly, humiliatingly reminiscent of some of Jack’s earliest experiences at school dances, and while he had never expected in all his life to be able to sympathize with Megatron of all people, that was nevertheless the prevailing influence on Jack’s next action.

“You know,” said Jack carefully, maintaining a respectful distance from the hairy purple menace sitting on the lunch table. The hairy purple menace continued eating picked herring by the fistful from the restaurant-sized tub that June had procured, and did not respond; but one pointed ear swiveled toward Jack in what Jack decided to interpret as an invitation to continue, or at least not an immanent threat of mortal peril.

Jack seated himself carefully at the opposite end of the table, and the ear tracked his motion. “You know,” Jack said again, and then coughed. “You might … uh. I mean. Have you tried, you know … asking first?”

The gruesome noises of pickled herring being untidily masticated did not pause, but the ear flicked inquisitively.

“I mean,” Jack said, and then wondered desperately why he was even doing this in the first place, “a lot of people don’t … y’know … like being touched without permission.”

The chomping noises slowed thoughtfully.

“And, well … Optimus is kind of a …” Jack floundered in silent horror as the reality of this particular conversation crashed down upon him, “kind of … a private sort of person? So maybe you should try asking him before you touch him, see if that works better, anyway I think I hear my mom gotta go bye.” Sweating profusely, young Master Darby fled the scene.

Megatron shoved another dripping fistful of picked herring into his appalling maw and then licked his paw clean – for a relative and extremely generous definition of clean – and pondered for a while.

With a huffy little sigh, Megatron hopped down from the table – and how low had the mighty Lord of the Decepticons fallen, he mused, that his motion could only be described as “hopping” down, rather than “descending grandly” or even just “stalking proudly,” for Primus’s sake – and shambled bipedally over to Optimus.

Optimus ignored him with the same quiet desperation as always.

Well, time for something new; after all, trying the same thing and expecting different results was the definition of insanity, and while Megatron frankly acknowledged that he had never exactly been a stellar example of mental stability, he was nevertheless as sane as a multi-million-year-old genocidal warlord who had mysteriously been turned into some sort of cross between a feral cat and a garbage disposal could be under the circumstances. (That interlude with the dark energon and his admittedly erratic behavior was going to be passed over without comment.)

Another huffy little sigh, and he plopped gracelessly to the floor within arm’s reach of Optimus, rasping out a noise that sounded exactly like an asthmatic sea lion choking on a plastic sandwich bag.

Optimus whirled around and stared at him, blue eyes huge and wondering in his little fuzzy face; and then, slowly, as though he couldn’t believe he was doing this, Optimus nodded.

Megatron scooted a little closer. Optimus did not smack him or say rude things that sounded to the humans like an innocuous “meow.” Megatron scooted a little closer, and then Optimus closed the remaining distance and they were sitting together, leaning into each other a little, firm contact from shoulder to hip.

Everyone else – human and Cybertronian alike – stared at the tableau in horror, and then found something else to look at.

After twenty minutes, June looked over and smiled. Optimus was leaning against Megatron, using him as a furry purple backrest while Optimus read his datapad; and Megatron …

Megatron’s eyes were squeezed shut, and his little taloned hands were clenched into fists against his chest, and his little taloned toes were curling and uncurling in obvious happiness; and then the rough stuttering noise of a motorcycle with a bad piston and something dubious in the gas tank rattled out of his chest, resolving itself into the rustiest-sounding purr ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I just say that @soursoppi rules so hard? [Look at this!](https://soursoppi.tumblr.com/post/174530694342/travellinglemonworkshop-who-wants-more)


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which personal hygiene is crucial to successful interpersonal dynamics, and no good deed goes unpunished.

In bold defiance of expectations, life continued in its meandering course, blundering gently from triumph to disaster like a narcoleptic manatee in a power plant cooling pond. Ratchet had not yet mastered Earth-based organic pharmacology, but he had managed to restore the ground bridge to short-range functionality; Wheeljack had started developing a gibberish-to-English translation device (right now it successfully translated organic mutant gibberish to Xhosa, which was unhelpful but at least a step in the right direction); and the Decepticons had continued to keep an unusually low profile, aside from the time Starscream drunk-texted Fowler at 2AM.

The problems that did arise were almost refreshingly mundane from the perspective of the Cybertronians, who had been at war so long that figuring out things like non-verbal communication techniques – everyone had become fluent in ASL at this point, even Bulkhead; he had the additional challenge of insufficient tarsal dexterity, but the creepy tentacles accessorizing his dorsal-mounted shrubbery were more than adequate for the task – and dental hygiene – also novel to a species which had not previously had actual teeth – were sort of a relaxing mental exercise in contrast.

And then, of course, there was bathing.

The issue first reared its reeking, dirt-encrusted head after Smokescreen and Bumblebee had returned from a playdate at the outdoor ropes course. The ropes course was, by now, a familiar diversion; what was less familiar was the state of the surrounding terrain after a rainstorm.

Ratchet took one look at the mud-and-twig encrusted duo and promptly chased them right out of the base. Fowler couldn’t actually understand the fusillade of chirps, clicks, and barking noises being directed at him, but he got the gist well enough, and his protests that he’d been fine with transporting the gruesome twosome in his government-owned sedan – he’d put towels on the seats, after all – was met with disdainful dismissal and a gesture that smacked strongly of “talk to the hand.”

Cleaning Smokescreen turned out to be a non-event, and required nothing more than a hose and a wet rag for the stubborn bits.

Everyone then looked at the hose, looked at Bumblebee and his not-fully-understood electrical powers, and took a step back. Bumblebee sighed and stomped over to stand in the post-Smokescreen puddle with the air of someone taking one for the team.

Nothing exploded, caught fire, or started arcing. June brought out a bottle of dish soap with the explanation that it worked on oily penguins and should therefore be safe enough for mutant electro-rabbits, and shortly thereafter Bumblebee was cleaned, towel-dried, and hilariously fluffy.

It turned out that both Bulkhead and Wheeljack were similarly easy to clean. Wheeljack’s fluffy bits drooped soggily after being hosed down post-lob game, but he quickly figured out how to shake himself dry in a maneuver that would put a St. Bernard to shame in terms of splatter radius; and Bulkhead simply drip-dried while his tentacles splashed happily amongst the remaining puddles.

Optimus and Ratchet, like Bumblebee, had the short, dense, silky fur of a psychedelic chinchilla; they didn’t need to bathe often, particularly if they groomed themselves – or each other – regularly with a brush, and when they did bathe it was an issue only because the shower drain tended to be somewhat sluggish afterward.

And then there was Megatron.

Megatron did not have short, dense fur. Megatron, in point of fact, had the exact opposite – long, shaggy, incredibly soft (Optimus was the only one who had first-hand, or rather first-paw, knowledge of this particular fact), impossibly fine, and infuriatingly prone to tangling. He did not engage in communal grooming with Bumblebee or Ratchet, since neither of them would come within six yards of him, and he hadn’t yet permitted such a familiarity of Optimus; and while he was less prone to go tearing through the mud than certain members of Team Prime, he was far more likely to go crawling through the ancient, unkempt ventilation system, from which he would emerge dusty and copiously festooned with cobwebs.

Also, there was the matter of his diet. Pickled herring could be described as _fragrant_ , but the lack of corresponding qualifier left it open to the observer’s interpretation as to whether that was a good or bad quality.

Fowler had been gearing himself up – literally, in this case: he had worn his cut-resistant stab-proof Kevlar longjohns in preparation for the inevitable leg biting that was sure to result – to deal with the problem himself, possibly with a hose, a long-handled brush, and a catch pole on loan from his buddy at the local Animal Control office, only to find that Optimus had beaten him to it.

Fowler took one look at the plastic wading pool, the hose brigade lead by June, and the miserably sopping, foam-covered figure of a sulking Megatron, and beat a hasty retreat to his office.

Optimus, also sopping wet, covered in foam, and wielding a scrub brush, did not pause in his obvious diatribe about the requirements of personal grooming and the social benefits thereof. He did nod briefly to Fowler in passing, as dignified as a tiny wet cat with soap bubbles on his ears could possibly be, and then went back to haranguing Megatron.

Megatron swatted irritably at the bubbles on his face and made rude noises that were more commonly associated with a bullfrog in acute gastrointestinal distress having a close encounter with a riding lawnmower, but did not otherwise resist.

Drying him proved to be even more of a challenge. “Damn, that’s a lot of fur,” said June wearily; she had finally suggested that Megatron simply roll around on the army of beach towels that she and the kids had spread across the floor when it became obvious that toweling him off was absolutely going to result in someone getting an armful of teeth. It was undignified but moderately effective, and had at least removed sufficient moisture from Megatron’s fur that turning a hair dryer on him afterward wasn’t completely futile.

The hair dryer had the added benefit of highlighting just how extraordinarily fluffy he actually was; soaking wet, he hadn’t been appreciably smaller than usual, but blown out after his bath, Megatron looked almost twice his usual size due to the sheer volume of hair.

The kids, foolishly, started to giggle.

Ten minutes later, after they had fled screaming and Optimus had lectured reprovingly about Megatron’s distinctly antisocial response to their perceived mockery, there was an entirely different noise resonating through the base.

Optimus was brushing Megatron’s fur, and Megatron was purring.

Fowler winced. “Sounds like he’s running rough and needs a new carburetor,” he muttered to June. She elbowed him into submission before Megatron heard him; he had taken off the Kevlar longjohns.

Optimus finished brushing Megatron’s back, made the grave miscalculation of moving into grabbing distance, and promptly found himself immobilized between all four of Megatron’s claw-tipped feet. He had just enough time to chirp inquisitively before disaster struck.

Megatron, in some sort of primitive, atavistic attempt to repay the courtesy of grooming, was washing him.

With his tongue.

Optimus hung there in horrified shock as Megatron, still purring, licked him from head to toe. Megatron’s tongue was, in fact, alarmingly prehensile, and Megatron was by nature extremely thorough about the execution of tasks when he put his mind to it, and Optimus found himself distressingly damp in short order.

On the catwalk, Fowler and June winced and decided to go elsewhere. Just because they couldn’t understand Optimus’s speech didn’t mean they couldn’t tell when he was cussing up a storm; and given the way he was chasing Megatron around the room brandishing a brush, some measure of collateral damage was only to be expected.

*

Optimus returned from his post-tongue bath shower in a much better mood (chasing Megatron around the room had likewise been invigorating and almost pleasantly nostalgic), and found Megatron huddled despondently in his noisome little den beneath the stairs.

Optimus poked his head into the space and chirped.

Megatron’s head shot up, and he turned to stare at Optimus in complete bewilderment.

Optimus nodded and proffered the brush again.

Some time later, having noted the lack of further tumult and shouting, the kids ventured back into the main room and found Optimus sitting happily on the floor with an equally delighted Megatron brushing him.

“Gross,” said Miko.

“I dunno,” said Jack, “it’s kind of … cute?”

Miko looked at him with rampant distrust, as though he was about to start singing show tunes. “No,” she said firmly. “ _Gross_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Art!](https://soursoppi.tumblr.com/post/175675086782/travellinglemonworkshop-anyone-interested-in)


End file.
